The Wrong Man

100

I woke up in the hospital with a start. Two beautiful women stood in my room. And Joel Lightner was no Robert Redford, but it was nice to see him, too.

I tried to take a deep breath but it hurt. Every part of my body hurt. But I still had two arms and two legs, and I could feel all of them, so it could have been worse.

“What happened?” I asked. “Did the… bomb go off?”

They looked at each other. “You don’t remember,” said Shauna.

Tori was hanging back, letting Shauna and Joel hover over me. Actually, it seemed like Shauna had sort of boxed her out.

“The bomb went off,” she said. “The mosque was leveled.”

I took another pained breath. “Casualties?”

Shauna shook her head. “Lots of injuries. A few people in critical condition. So far, no deaths.”

My head fell back on the pillow. I closed my eyes and felt myself spin. “That’s… amazing.”

“They have a theory,” said Joel. “He didn’t use as much firepower in that truck as in the others. He didn’t need to take down some huge government building. Just a one-story mosque. Just a really big house, basically. And they think he didn’t want to blow it to smithereens, anyway.”

“He wanted people… to survive and… try to escape,” I mumbled. “So he could pick them off… as they fled.”

“Just like the hotel in Adana,” Shauna said. “But apparently he changed his plan when he saw everyone evacuating the mosque. So he drove the truck straight into the entrance. The truck was three-quarters inside the foyer of the mosque when it detonated. The blasting radius-that’s what these guys call it-the blasting radius wasn’t particularly wide, especially when the mosque itself absorbed much of the blow.”

Joel said, “So people closest to the mosque, like you, superstar, got the worst of it, but nobody got blown up. Just knocked off their feet. You came down on your head and had a nice five-hour nap.”

“The woman you were carrying out,” said Shauna, “the one in the wheelchair, broke her leg and has some scrapes and bruises, but she’s otherwise fine.”

“But everyone got out, Jason.” Lightner again. “You called Dr. Baraniq, apparently. The people in that mosque had about a twelve-minute start. Over a thousand people evacuated a mosque in just over ten minutes.”

A doctor came in and wanted to check me out. My vision was cloudy, and it hurt when I moved my eyes right to left. Or when I closed them. Or when I stood still. I noted that my left leg was heavily bandaged, my left arm less so.

“We’re going to leave you now.” Shauna pressed her lips against my forehead. She got off the bed. “C’mon, Joel.”

“See you later, tough guy.”

I opened my eyes again. Not everybody was leaving. Shauna was giving Tori and me some privacy. That felt… I don’t know what it felt like.

When the doctor finished with me, Tori came over and took the spot on the bed where Shauna had been. She took my hand in hers and brought it up to her face.

“Sleep,” she said. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”